


Give Me Welcome

by MercuryGray, MontmartreParapluie



Category: Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, F/M, Original Character(s), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Reunions, Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-30
Updated: 2017-07-30
Packaged: 2018-12-08 17:54:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11651706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryGray/pseuds/MercuryGray, https://archiveofourown.org/users/MontmartreParapluie/pseuds/MontmartreParapluie
Summary: It should be easy, to leave the past behind - and yet Caleb Brewster cannot let it go, and all his friends are at a loss to help him. But perhaps another, unexpected face can turn his mind to other matters.





	Give Me Welcome

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Once More To Part From You](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4752218) by [MercuryGray](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryGray/pseuds/MercuryGray). 



> This idea’s been bothering me since Caleb had his run-in with Simcoe, and MontmartreParapluie helped me tease this out over two days of tag-team writing. Most of you probably won’t remember the young lady in this story; she was my first OC for Turn and didn’t get nearly enough of my love and time.

_Alas, 'tis true I have gone here and there_  
And made myself a motley to the view,   
Gor'd mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,   
Made old offences of affections new. 

_\- Sonnet 110, William Shakespeare_

"Major, there's a boy out here says he needs to see you." 

 

Ben looked up from his paperwork and glared at the private at the door of his tent. "Did he say why?" The Head of Intelligence asked, hoping it was a matter of some consequence and not the disposition of supplies or a plea on behalf of the child's mother or father.

 

He would get all sorts - somehow word had gotten around that Major Tallmadge liked newspapers and would pay good coin for them, and now every urchin in the camp seemed determined to dog his heels for money for the most foxed and grimy of pages - most of them so far out of date that they would have been of no value except at the latrine, which, he suspected, was where most had come from.

 

The soldier shook his head. "Said you'd see him - said he was from Setauket." He said it with a twang, Sea-tawk-ettt,  that made Ben almost homesick for a moment.

 

But the name did make him pause. Would Abe have - no, certainly not. 

 

"I'll go," Caleb said, irritably, from the cot he was currently cat-napping on. Ben silently gave thanks at his interest. He hadn’t known what to do with him since he'd come back from New York - his best friend had been distracted and irritable- to say nothing of his increasing drunkenness. Was this, he wondered, how a good soldier went to ruin - absolutely soused? But Ben didn’t have time to find out the root cause of his friend’s sudden unreliability. All he knew was that Caleb was no longer as useful to him as he had been of old, and at a time when Ben needed him most. Perhaps an old acquaintance from home would set him right?

 

He turned in his chair, mindful that Caleb had barely spoken to him since their hastily changed mission several days before. 'Go easy on him, Caleb. Probably just a messenger boy, or another runaway wanting to be drummer boy.' he said, awkwardly. 'Send him away with a flea in his ear if he's after money.' He gave a humourless chuckle. 'Anyone should know the Continental Army's not the place to go begging.'

 

If it was a joke, Caleb didn’t laugh, rising a little unsteadily from his chair and giving what might have been a salute in Ben's general direction before following the soldier outside to go see whatever this unfortunate soul might want.  Ben half-turned in his chair, listening. Caleb’s unpredictability had lately run to bouts of anger, and whatever unlucky soul happened to be passing at the time usually got the brunt of it. 

 

"Heard Private Fish here say you were from Setauket," Caleb said. "Now I don’t think I know you, so whatever business you have with Bennie Tallmadge you can have with me."

 

“Do you not know me, Mr. Brewster?” Ben listened closer, something about the boy's voice awaking a note of familiarity.That wasn't quite a boy's voice, was it? it was light, yes, but the tine was all wrong... 

 

There was an intake of breath from behind the tent flap. "M -Merry?!”

 

Ben nearly upended his chair moving out of the tent, only to find a quite touching scene outside - Caleb's arms wrapped firmly around a slightly built young man - or so it seemed. He cleared his throat and the pair broke up, giving Ben an opportunity to study the newcomer. 

 

There was a young man standing next to Caleb, shirt hanging loose under a patched and threadbare jacket, a scarf tied haphazardly around the throat. Or rather - a reasonable facsimile of a young man. The boy looked up, and suddenly the eyes peering out fearfully from underneath the floppy, patched farmer's hat were the same dark, inquisitive eyes that he had last seen at home - god, was it four years now, or five? "Miss...Hayman?" Ben asked. Of womanly curves there was no great outward sign, though Ben remembered Merriment Hayman as being a pretty picture of a girl when she and Caleb had been courting.

 

"Captain Tallmadge,” she said, starting to duck a curtsey and then, remembering herself, making an awkward salute with a touch to her hat. “But it's... _ Martin _ Hayman," she supplied quickly, her gaze darting around at any potential onlookers.

 

“Of course,” Ben said, quickly lifting the tent flap to beckon the 'boy' in.

 

Caleb had still not let go of 'Master' Hayman’s waist - and only remembered appearances at a meaningful cough from Ben. “Yeah. Of course... sorry. This way -”

 

But once the tent flap had fallen back in, Caleb’s hands were back where they’d started, drinking in the sight of the girl he’d left behind in Setauket. “Merry - what are you doin' here?” Caleb was staring tenderly into her eyes, face close to her. “Why aren't you back in Setauket with your old man and your ma?” Ben saw her hesitate, and, at the same time, Caleb's mind flying to wild places. His eyes widened. "Those red-coated bastards didn't -"

 

"No!" Merry said quickly, trying to calm him. "No, nothing - like that. The garrison’s been very civiI. Maybe a little too civil.” She hesitated again. “One of the soldiers was...courting me, or something like, and my father was of a mind to let him marry me. I'd no stomach for it and little enough to say that he’d listen to, so I...I left. We were visiting my mother’s family, in Connecticut, and one night I...stole some clothes and some food, and put on to be a boy from Fairfield to here." 

 

"Fairfield!" Even cold-hearted Ben had to be impressed by that. "And you'd no trouble on the road?"

 

"None to speak of,” she said with a little shrug. “Save rain, and...bad boots.” She gestured to her feet, the shoes upon them more hole than leather. “And the business of being a boy, which I...wasn’t very good at.”

 

Caleb, Ben noticed, was almost a different person altogether with Merry in the room. Distracted from his present pains, he was more like his old self, although from the questioning, concerned looks Merry was darting at the hollows under his eyes and the shadows, she noticed some difference in him. He held both her hands, occasionally, brushing one cheek with his finger as though re-learning the shape of her face by heart.

 

Although that could be another problem. Caleb was strange and unwilling enough as it was . But perhaps this was a blessing in disguise - with Merry to look after, Caleb wouldn’t have quite so much time - or inclination - to drink. “You did well,” Ben said, eager to change the subject and return to his papers. “And you were lucky. But aside from the risks - what did you do for money? You must have needed to eat.”

 

“I begged rides with passing farmers - unloaded for them or walked their horses. Sometimes they’d have a dinner to share, and sometimes not. Between that...stole, mostly. Eggs, apples, berries." Her stomach gave a terrible growl that indicated exactly how well she'd been eating, and she looked a little ashamed.

 

"It's a wonder you're not fallin' over!" Caleb exclaimed, quite ready to rush off. "Where's Annie? She'll have -" 

 

"Now wait, Caleb. Wait. There's still the matter of how she's to stay in camp. Is it to be Martin Hayman or Merry?"  _ Had we not better ask Anna to bring by a skirt, while she's bringing dinner? _ A suit of borrowed clothes and a large hat might have been good enough for a disguise on the road, but in a small army camp such anonymity was rare. 

 

Caleb's face fell. "Oh."

 

Ben ran a hand through his hair distractedly. “There'd be questions asked about ‘Martin’ here regardless, Caleb. Better have her be…” He wanted to say comfortable, but that seemed a stretch. “Among the women-folk. Anna and…” Ben’s face darkened slightly. “Ahem...Mrs... Smith, I suppose, will make you at home.” 

 

Ben had been avoiding Mary Woodhull of late. He was beginning to see why she and Abe were well-matched - they both had a streak of rashness and a complete disregard for risk - or, on occasion, direct orders.  Fortunately, Merry had always seemed to have a steady head on her shoulders - a complete counterpoint to Caleb. That would be a blessing, too; Ben had enough trouble evading Anna's reproaches and Mrs Woodhull's impassioned demands for news of her husband to deal with a third female making approaches on his time.

 

What  _ had _ he done to deserve a parcel of unregimented women? he thought, somewhat uncharitably. Was it any wonder the General had issued orders to keep the followers away from camp? Caleb reached out and pulled Ben's threadbare cloak from where its owner had thrown it on his cot, tucking it around Merry in the way a man might nurse a sick child. Neither he nor Miss Hayman seemed to register his presence. 'I'll go and ...arrange matters, with Mrs Strong,' Ben said, tactfully.

 

Caleb only barely registered his leaving, his eyes too full of a woman he hadn't seen properly for years. Was it only his imagination, or had she gotten thinner? She did not seem to fill his arms as she had once. Weeks of hard living on the road would do that, he supposed - and it was not as though there were a great quantity of food in camp, especially for a camp follower, for him to fix that.

 

"But you're all right?" He asked again, taking her hands once she'd been tucked into the cloak. 

 

"Yes, I'm all right. And if I'm not, it's nothing a... warm bed and a fire won't fix." She smiled at him and laid a hand reassuringly on his chest - right over his scar. He hissed and drew away as though she'd burned him. "Caleb?"

 

“It's ...nothing.” Caleb huddled in on himself, wincing.  _ Oh shite, _  he thought inwardly. He didn't want to explain anything - anything that made him see that dingy cellar again, or smell his own flesh burning - and here was Merry - adorable, lovable Merry, already brushing up against the memory of it with a concerned little pucker between her eyebrows.

 

Wisely, she did not press the matter, moving her hand and settling for taking his hand again, and Caleb breathed easier. But the scar on his chest still burned like a brand, and no amount of cozy chatter with Merry was enough to drown it out. 

 

Anna and Mary eventually sent word that they had produced enough garments from rag-bags and judicious trading to make her respectable, though there wasn't much they could do for stays except the scored leather version some of the lowest women wore. Martin Hayman was bundled out of Major Tallmadge's tent and went with Lieutenant Brewster down to Mrs Strong's cart to take tea with an old friend, after which point Merriment Hayman emerged, a picture of diminished circumstances, her hair not quite manageable under her cap. "I had to cut it," she told a somewhat frowning Mrs. Strong as she tucked in flyaways. "No boy's got hair as long as that."

 

“We can say you've been ill,' Mary said quickly. “The amount of sickness in the camp, everyone will believe that.”

  
“That's not bad,” Anna admitted. “If you want to keep sutler's shop with me, Merry,  I can use another pair of hands. They're light-fingered enough to need watching…”

 

Mary looked a little put out. “You never offered me a chance to…”

  
Ben cut her off with a long look. “Miss Hayman doesn't throw around words like 'adulteress' though, does she?” Mary’s face fell quickly, and she turned back to rearranging the folds of Merry’s kerchief and studying the effect in Anna’s tiny pier-glass while Caleb watched the whole scene with arms folded and a proprietary air, pleased as punch to watch Merry be fussed over. Ben almost gave a little smile of his own. _And even if she did,_ _I haven't seen Caleb smile like that in months_. As the women fussed about caps and gowns the smuggler suddenly remembered a piece of ribbon he’d been saving for Merry in his things and dashed off like a much younger man in search of it, his steps light and his purpose real, a far change from the morose fellow he’d been lately. 

 

Ben had long ago realized that Caleb had a trick of smiling with his eyes alone that had brought many a likely wench to ruin, and many a wild plan into play. It was a sudden, warm and tender brown flash that made you instinctively trust him. And he hadn't noticed how empty his friend’s eyes had been lately until now, when they were full again. 

 

Watching him leave, Merry turned away from the glass and glanced at the other three, a question in her eyes. "Has Caleb been..." She stopped as their full attention turned on her. "Has he been hurt? Lately?" 

 

Mary shook her head, and Anna and Ben exchanged half a glance before Ben said, "It's just a long time since he's seen anyone from home." 

 

Merry nodded, looking a little flustered for having asked such a silly question. "Of course. And I'll help Mrs. Strong with the shop," she said, in response to the question they’d posed earlier. “I want to ...pull my weight.”

 

"Good," Anna said. "And you'll give me all the news from home over a cup of...well, not quite tea, but near enough." She looked at Ben, still lingering. "Haven't you got somewhere to be, Major Tallmadge? Before someone starts another rumor?"

 

Ben flushed turkey-red, and she knew he would, looking irritable - but he took the hint and strode away. Mary stopped a moment, to deposit a triangle of badly knitted rough grey wool into Merry's lap. '”It's a shawl,” She said, by way of explanation. “The nights get cold here.” She turned on her heel with a chilly little nod of the head to Anna and left. Anna watched her leave and went to tend the kettle, pouring two cups and returning to where Merry sat, in the midst of Anna’s wares.

 

"So it's...Mrs. Smith," Merry confirmed, picking up the shawl and running the stitches through her fingers.

 

"It’s too well known a name, now, with the Magistrate..." Anna trailed off, and Merry nodded, looking up and accepting the cup with grateful hands. Her long time on the road had certainly roughened them up - not like Mary’s hands, which had been white and clean and looked as though they’d not done housework in a long while, which was true.

 

"Like how Martin Hayman can go where Merry can't," Merry supplied thoughtfully. Anna nodded. Merry studied the shawl a little longer and then glanced up at Anna a second time. "Why was Capt- Major Tallmadge blushing when he left?"

 

"Oh, that." Anna's look soured. "Women aren't much allowed in camp. There's a rumor about that he and I are..." She let the significance of the silence speak. Merry’s face fell and she blushed, ashamed of having asked. "And you're a prettier picture than I," Anna said with a smile, adjusting a corner of the kerchief at Merry’s throat. "I think it goes without saying you may find yourself with some admirers of your own."

 

Merry pulled a face as she sipped her tea - or at least, the vaguely brown stuff at the bottom of the tea-chest that passed for tea. “As long as they admire from a distance.”  _ I think you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you, my girl, _ Anna thought to herself, thinking of the story Ben had told her about what had gone on in Setauket. Her guest glanced down into her mug, trying, unsuccessfully, to figure out what she was drinking in a polite manner.  “I'm sure it's mostly ground acorns, sorry about that.” Anna said, settling herself down on the chest. “But at least it's warm.”

 

The younger woman smiled for that, and nodded, rising from her seat as a customer approached. “Anything we can help you find today?” she asked, as though she’d been keeping a shop her whole life. The soldier looked surprised at such prompt - and pleasant - service.

 

It was hard settling into life in camp - not just for lack of tea, which was the least of anyone's worries. It was a strange new world with its own rules - that women were not permitted in camp unless on matters of business, as Anna was, and that men were not permitted in the women's encampment unless under cover of darkness. It was perfectly fine to discuss matters that would not have been whispered in Setauket, and a grievous sin to mention others that it would not have bothered anyone to discuss in the street. The General's command decisions, for instance, were not to be talked about, nor anything that might seem to a casual onlooker to be intelligence gathering. Merry knew that Major Tallmadge had something to do with that for Washington - and Anna and Caleb, too, but she knew better than to ask. 

 

Not that Caleb seemed to have much to do now - he was often around and about camp, picking at odd jobs without any serious settled occupation, and while he said that he reported to Ben, there seemed little that the Head of Intelligence gave him to do.

 

Merry, however, knew nothing about idleness - while it might have been permitted in the men, a woman could be drummed out for failing to do her duties. Between helping Anna mind her shop while she... copied her reports for Ben or whatever it was she did so secretly, there was the simple buisness of life, just as there had been at home, cooking and cleaning and laundry. It helped, a little bit, with the homesickness - and a pair of busy hands had less time to get up to mischief with anyone who asked.

 

It was also helpful, Merry was finding, to have a protector. In that way, Setauket and New Windsor were alike - a man who might ward off the attentions of others as his preferred property, much as Anna seemed to shelter from the storm of camp underneath Ben's influence. One small benefit to the rumor of her association with the Head of Intelligence was that she was not subject to the open flirtations of the officers - with women scarce, the attentions paid to those who remained were high drama indeed. And so Merry attached herself to Caleb - an easy enough proposition, when he nearly brained a fellow for whistling at her one morning. It was soon quite well known that Miss Hayman was Lieutenant Brewster's particular concern, and she had no problems or propositions after that.

 

But the more time she spent in camp, the more she began to worry about Caleb.  He had always seemed, at least to her, so untouchable - her laughing, merry sailor who thumbed his nose at the king, the world and the devil himself if it amused him to, and laughed consequences to scorn. Even in the dark early days of the war, when everything seemed so hopeless, he was always laughing. The war dragged its feet still, but now so did Caleb. He could get lost in watching a campfire burn, face clouded over with a far-away, frozen look- and he drank with the grim determination of a man trying to scrub his mind clean like a front step. Never where she could see, or find him, but she knew he did it - his clothes smelled of whiskey and his eyes were red. And it worried her, more than his being away had ever given her cause to.

 

She’d had it in her mind that she’d come to camp and take care of him, but he was hard to take care of - years of living on his own, and this new-found darkness hanging about his shoulders, had seen to that. He found his own food, or said he did. Merry suspected he sometimes forgot to eat and that explained his new-found leanness. Occasionally she could coax him to eat a bowl of stew with a hunk of bread in front of her, so she knew he had at least had something : but some days he shrugged it off, or gently pressed it on Merry instead. “You've been hungry enough whilst I've not been there to see you right,” he'd say. “You take it.'

  
There was one point though, on which Caleb couldn't refuse her, and that was laundry. It was the camp followers’ duty, after all - and 'intelligence man' or not, even Caleb could not dispute when his linen was dirty or in disrepair, or tell Merry that he’d handle it himself.

 

"That collar's coming loose," she said, tipping a basket onto the table of the tent he shared with Ben and rummaging through it before she found a clean one. "Give me what you've got on and I'll mend it. It'll save me a trip." Caleb looked at her outstretched hand and seemed to weigh something in his mind, his lips pursed and his expression, as it usually was these days, far away. "If it's my modesty you're considering,  it's nothing I haven't seen," Merry reminded him.  _ It's a great deal more, if we're speaking of lately _ , she wanted to say, but that seemed cruel. But she'd come to camp thinking she would have to get used to... certain things, and those things had not been asked of her with the regularity she had anticipated. Indeed, saving a quick and unpleasant tussle one night while the both of them were nearly, fully clothed, there had been none at all.

 

It was not that he did not wish to touch her - but more, she thought, that he did not wish her to touch him, as though he were somehow unclean.

 

“I could bring it by, later-” Caleb’s voice trailed away, as though he realised just how pitiful that excuse was. His fingers hesitated a moment over the rough wooden buttons. Merry noticed they were trembling a little. But then with set face, he gave a sort of shrug - as though damning the consequences, and, wincing a little, began to raise his shirt over his head.

 

He caught her eye and turned away, suddenly concerned that she was watching, the broad plane of his back facing her.. "Why don't you just give me the new one?" He asked, suddenly shy, holding out his hand, the shirt still on.

 

"Why don't you turn and ask for it like a gentleman?" Merry said, standing her ground. The tent suddenly seemed to go very still. "Have I done something wrong, Caleb? Why will you not look at me when you speak? Are you ashamed of me?" The word 'ashamed' seemed to sting him particularly, but he did not turn. "Will you not look at me, Caleb?" She begged again, waiting until, he finally drew off the shirt, arms held in as though she might not see if he somehow made himself smaller. But nothing could hide the great, red gash across his shoulders, still healing - nor the even wider, angrier one across his chest that came into view as he turned to look at her, the skin around it blistered and purpling. Merry's hand flew to her mouth, her eyes wide. "Caleb! What...?"

 

"It's nothin’,'" Caleb said shortly. He almost couldn't bear to meet her eyes, see the horror and concern there. “Souvenir, you could say, of-”

  
But the laughing, easy voice was outside his power, and a half-choked sob swelled threatened to escape his throat instead. Caleb tried to keep it back, tried to keep it shut between his teeth. He'd betrayed enough people already, hadn't he? A mocking voice inside his head whispered - in a loathed, sing-song intonation that hadn't left Caleb's head since those days in the cellar. Betray his shame to Merry? Oh no, he could least keep her safe, keep her innocent. But innocence didn't protect you, did it? First Uncle Lucas, his friends, himself... his eyes blurred with angry tears of self-hatred. He staggered sideways blindly, knocking against his own sea-chest and lumpy camp bed and collapsing onto it, his head in his hands.

 

He felt her, sitting down next to him and pulling him towards her, his face pressed to her chest, tears soaking her kerchief, the only words he could manage a long blubbering string of "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry." Merry wrapped her hands around his head and shoulder and let him cry, hoping it would do some good, and wondering if the great gash on his chest had been a man or a beast or somehow both.

 

"Sorry for what, my love?" She murmured, stroking his hair and trying to hold back tears of her own. "I'm not hurt, I'm here, and so is Ben, and Anna. They're all here, my love.  All safe."

 

"Safe?" Caleb turned his cheek against her kerchief, relishing the sensation of warmth and softness -briefly. She'd turn from him in disgust once she knew, but. “Not thanks to me! I should have been stronger, I shouldn't have let that pale eyed bastard get ter me -” 

  
Merry moved closer to him on the narrow bed, fitting herself carefully next to the line of his leg and the warm wideness of his side as he stumbled into incoherence, wracking sobs making his back heave. She put both arms around him, leaning her forehead against his own. “Tell me,” She said simply, still stroking his hair. “There, tell me everything…”

 

He resisted, for a little while, until with enough stroking and sobbing he choked out enough of the tale for her to make sense of it - the trip to Connecticut and his capture, his time in Bridewell, and - this the most painful - the long agony in the prison cellar. "And I said nothing, and he knew! He knew..."

 

Caleb broke off, sobbing still, inconsolable, Merry powerless to help him. She remembered Simcoe well enough - what man, woman or child in Setauket wouldn't? - and had spent more than one conversation under his icy gaze feeling as though he'd stripped her naked and was cooly contemplating what to do next. And to be a prisoner - a prisoner for whom he had nothing but contempt! - and under his total power!

 

Merry didn't say anything: to say anything now would be to make anything he said either too big or too small. Caleb needed someone to listen, for once, without wondering how it could compromise the army, or change their strategy, or even what it might do to her. Only after he had wept his heart out, and  fallen into subdued silence, did Merry quietly, almost timidly suggest something that occurred to her. “Caleb,' She said, gently. 'Did you never think... perhaps he just said that to torment you?'

Caleb stared blearily at her, almost too tired to comprehend what she said. "He's a wicked, cruel man, and he knows you're not. He could say anything he liked, knowing you'd believe it - because you are good, Caleb, and it would hurt you to think it true, just as much as if he’d ...cut you again." Her hand lingered where it was, wanting to touch the scar again and knowing that she shouldn't. "He could have said that he'd...taken me, and you'd have thought he’d done it. You were delirious, insensible. So ...whatever he said,  even if it was true...It doesn't matter now. You’re home and whatever he knows, he knows, and it wasn’t just you that gave it to him."

“I keep hearing his voice inside my head,” the sailor mumbled. “Tauntin’ me.”

 

“What does he say?” 

 

“Thanks me, for giving up my friends. Tells me he knows how I’ll be treated when I get home. Reminds me what a useless shite I am, how anyone would be ashamed to know me, asks himself why anyone wouldn’t kill me like the faithless dog I am…” he broke off in heavy gouts of sobbing again.

 

Merry caught his shoulders and brought him close to her again, his face square with her own. “You’re not useless, and you’re not a dog, Caleb, and no one is thinking of killing you. And if they are they’ll...have to go through me first,” she said quickly, squaring her shoulders and trying her best to sound dangerous - a prospect at which she failed, but at least caused Caleb to laugh, a little. “And if you believe for one moment that I would be ashamed of you, Caleb Brewster, or that I would stop loving you for all of this, you’re a bigger fool than he is. I wouldn’t give this up for anything,” she touched his chest, her hand lingering near his heart. “Your heart. Your loyalty. Your tears. You’re a man, not an angel. And I don’t know too many that could take...this...and still be here.” She watched him, feeling she had to say something else and not knowing what would salve him.  “And here I was thinking you’d found another woman and didn’t know how to tell me.”

 

He gave another short laugh, and a little bit of his old smile came back. “Never,” he said softly, bumping his shoulder companionably into her own.

 

“Good,” Merry swallowed a few tears of her own. “That Sergeant Vaughn was making moon-eyes at me the other day and I didn’t like to think I’d have to tell him I was free.”

 

“Vaughn? The bastard. I’ll give him a good hiding.” There it was - a flash of her old Caleb, with his warm, wild eyes and his quick tongue.

 

Merry saw a chance and took it. “You could do more damage if you weren’t in the bottom of a bottle.”  _ Vaughn and Simcoe both _ , she thought to herself.

 

“I could that, couldn’t I?” His gaze was serious. “And what’ll be there to drown the voices out?”

 

“A lady...might be inclined to give certain favors, in light of services rendered,” she added, feeling bold. His smile broadened a little more, and his hand found her knee, his thumb stroking the inside of her leg. “You might ...think of her, if you hear those voices again.”

 

His smile broadened a little, and he licked his lips, considering and turning a little more towards her. “She might, eh? Think of her doin’ what?”

 

“Whatever you like.”

 

He gathered her into his lap, smiling again. “Can she beat the living daylights out of a tall ginger fella?”

 

Merry grinned, and kissed him, long and languid, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and telling him with her silent lips exactly what she thought of this proposition.

 

The next day Caleb Brewster was out in front of his tent sharpening his hatchet again, whistling to himself,  and Merry Hayman had an odd, pleased glint in her eye, and a red mark at her throat that her kerchief could not quite hide.

**Author's Note:**

> Most true it is, that I have looked on truth  
> Askance and strangely; but, by all above,  
> These blenches gave my heart another youth,  
> And worse essays proved thee my best of love.  
> Now all is done, have what shall have no end:  
> Mine appetite I never more will grind  
> On newer proof, to try an older friend,  
> A god in love, to whom I am confined.  
>  Then give me welcome, next my heaven the best,  
>  Even to thy pure and most most loving breast.
> 
>  
> 
> I think we all kept saying this season that Caleb needed a hug, and I just happened to have an OC spare who loves giving Caleb hugs, so I dragged Merry out of abandoned fic hell and gave her something to occupy herself with.


End file.
